Republicans Race to Finalize Tax Bill, Say They Have the Votes

By Yuval Rosenberg and Michael Rainey Republicans Race to Finalize Tax Bill, Say They Have the Votes Senate Republicans say they have the votes to pass their tax bill — even if they don’t yet have a final bill. Republicans were racing Friday to finalize last-minute changes to their legislation, but said they would be holding a vote later in the day or early Saturday morning, a remarkable pace for legislation that would be the most sweeping overhaul of the country’s tax code in three decades. “When will the Senate be able to actually see the full text of this legislation?” Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), the ranking Democrat on the Finance Committee, asked on the Senate floor. “There will be plenty of time to read the final version of it before we vote,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell replied. The late changes being introduced reportedly include an increased tax break for pass-through businesses that would allow owners to deduct 23 percent of their business income, up from 17.4 percent. That provision was apparently enough to win over Sens. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Steve Daines of Montana, who had expressed concern that the tax bill treated pass-throughs less favorably than corporations. Another new provision, sought by Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, would preserve the deduction for up to $10,000 in state and local property taxes paid, as the House bill allows. Another change offered by Collins would increase the deductibility of medical expenses. And Sen. Jeff Flake said he would support the bill after winning changes to a provision that allows businesses to write off equipment purchases. That tax break will now be phased out instead of expiring after five years. Flake also got an agreement that he would be included in discussions about fixes to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals law, known as DACA. The late changes would cost more than $300 billion over 10 years, according to [Bloomberg](. To pay for the additional costs, the Senate plan reportedly will not eliminate the alternative minimum tax for corporations and individuals, as the bill originally called for, and will increase tax rates imposed on repatriated offshore profits of multinational corporations. [Share]( [Tweet]( [Forward]( Tweet of the Day Chart of the Day A summary of recent tax bill scores, via the [Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget]( Concise Analysis of the Day The Wall Street Journal's [Richard Rubin]( provides this look at which provisions of the original Big Six tax framework have survived, and which have been changed on the Senate tax bill's path to passage. Are Wealthy Baby Boomers Trashing the Country on Their Way Out? There are many ways to describe the Republican tax bill — a much-needed boost for a sluggish economy, a hastily written mystery machine that will have countless unintended consequences, a confounding vehicle for increasing the national debt — but one aspect of the legislation has received relatively little attention: the plan’s significant generational effects. Ronald Brownstein argues in [The Atlantic]( that the winners and losers in the bill form a generational divide, with wealthy Baby Boomers clearly coming out on top. Boomers as a whole have more money than the groups coming behind them, and the tax bill showers additional benefits on them, Brownstein writes: “Overall, the tax bills reward wealth, and wealth accumulates with age: Households headed by people between 55 and 64 years old have an average net worth that’s 15 times that of households headed by people younger than 35, the data show.” At the same time, younger citizens will end up bearing most of the costs of the tax bill. Federal spending on programs that benefit future generations, such as education and research, are already near record lows, Brownstein writes, and the tax bill’s $1.5 trillion cost will increase pressure to cut social spending even further. And younger people will end up paying the interest on all that added debt, a bill which will likely continue to rise long after the Boomers are gone. The end result, according to Brownstein, is an increase in “generational inequity,” in which an economically stressed (and more ethnically diverse) younger generation suffers an “11th hour raid” by wealthy Boomers out to seize all the goodies they can as they shuffle off the historical stage. [Share]( [Tweet]( [Forward]( Your Prize for Making It Through the Week Sorry, it ain't over yet... News - [Republican Deficit Hawks Vanish as Senate Races to Pass Tax Bill]( – Bloomberg - [Republicans Are Rejecting the Official Analysis of Their Tax Bill’s Cost]( – Vox - [House Republicans’ Divisions Threaten Plans to Avert Government Shutdown]( – Washington Post - [5 Ways Congressional Tax Legislation Would Transform Health Care]( – NPR - [Realtors Predict Tax Bill Will Cause Housing Prices to Drop in Every State]( – Forbes - [Grad Students Protest GOP's Tax Hike and Prepare to Fight About Tuition]( – The Verge - [Amid Tax Bill Euphoria, One Big Part of the Stock Market Is Getting Left Behind: Tech]( – CNBC Views - [Republicans May Regret This Tax Bill]( – Matthew Yglesias, Vox - [I’m a Depression Historian. The GOP Tax Bill Is Straight Out of 1929]( – Robert McElvanie, Washington Post - [‘The Moment of Truth’ Will Involve More Than Just Taxes]( – Hunt Lawrence and Daniel J. Flyyn, American Spectator - [GOP Must Choose Between Faith and Evidence in Tax-Cut Vote]( – John Harwood, CNBC - [Trump Says G.O.P. Tax Bill Wouldn’t Benefit Him. That’s Not True.]( – James B. Stewart, New York Times - [Republicans’ Tax Lies Show the Rot Spreads Wide and Runs Deep]( – Paul Krugman, New York Times - [Babies or Board Rooms? Tax Bill Tests Republican Loyalties]( – Megan McArdle, Bloomberg View - [Senate Tax Madness]( – David Leonhardt, New York Times - [Alex Azar Is Big Pharma Personified. He Must Not Become US Health Secretary]( – Gabriel Levitt, The Guardian Copyright © 2017 The Fiscal Times, All rights reserved. You are receiving this newsletter because you subscribed at our website, thefiscaltimes.com. 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